Cadopolis Selected Feeds

Lock Down those AutoCAD Toolbars!

Fri, 16 May 2008 19:22 GMT

Week 3 of the Experience Tour is over and we get a week off before week 4 kicks off in Denver. This past week we hit Detroit and Toronto - where we had our largest crowd yet! A very nice...

Space Generation in ACD-A 2009 with AutoCAD® Object Boundaries

Fri, 16 May 2008 15:28 GMT

Several recent posts in the AutoCAD^® Architecture Discussion Group have asked why AutoCAD objects can no longer be used as boundaries when automatically generating Spaces, as they could in previous releases. The good news is that you can still use AutoCAD objects, and now you have more control over which objects are seen as Space boundaries. The "bad" news is that you have to tell ACD-A 2009 which AutoCAD objects are space bounding; this is done by setting the newly added Bound space property of the AutoCAD object, found in the Advanced category on the Design tab of the Properties palette, to "Yes".
If the drawing file in which you are working has no AutoCAD objects set to bound Spaces and has no AEC objects that are capable of forming a Space boundary, you will be presented with this helpful dialog, which allows you to either make all visible objects capable of bounding Spaces, or to select the objects you want to have capable of bounding Spaces.
So you can still quickly add Spaces to any "old" file (or any new file you get from someone using vanilla AutoCAD) - just remember to set the Bound spaces property of the linework you want to use as boundaries to Yes.

Horeseback riding in Scottsdale, Arizona

Fri, 16 May 2008 12:00 GMT

It's Friday - so my blog posts tend to be less technical. Each year the COFES (Congress On the Future of Engineering Software) conference is held in Scottsdale. Attendees are often taken on some type of excursion, so they can form an appreciation for the Arizona desert. Many non-Arizonans mistakenly picture pristine sand dunes with the occasional Saguaro cactus. Actually the desert looks like this:

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Some picture get their misconceptions of the desert by watching Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons. You can see that the desert is much more brushy. There are actually many Palo Verde and Mesquite trees as well as Cat's Claw and Creosote bushes. Where do you think tumbleweeds come from?

This past weekend my wife and I went horseback riding.

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My rental horse was a Golden Palamino. I was told by our guide that in days of yore only royalty would ride such horses. It was great to get out in the fresh air away from the computer.

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The Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce advertises the city as the West's "Most Western Town" in America.

AUGI CAD camp Salt Lake City 5/22/08

Fri, 16 May 2008 10:17 GMT

I am sitting waiting for my tire to be fixed and just realized the Salt Lake City Utah AUGI CAD camp (www.cadcamp.com) is just next week. I won't be presenting at the event but chances are good I will be there as I am local here in Salt Lake. AUGI CAD camps are one day learning and networking events on Autodesk products. you get top notch trainers at an extremely affordable price. I hope to see and meet you there.

-Shaan

Autodesk Developer Camps Coming in June

Fri, 16 May 2008 07:51 GMT

Partners, customers, and prospective customers with interest in developing on Autodesk software are invited to attend Autodesk DevCamps 2008! Want to deepen your relationships with your customers? Want to drive your customers to evangelize Autodesk technology within their organization and...

Cool Tools I Use: Cabinet Scraper

Fri, 16 May 2008 07:17 GMT

I truly believe that every one of us (yes, that includes YOU!) has cool tools that we use on an everyday basis and stories about how we use these tools and how we came to find and use them. I'd...

In search of… Sustainable Design for Civil Engineers

Fri, 16 May 2008 07:02 GMT

When I last talked about this, we were discussing various organizations that are leading the professional industry. Which led me to look for post-secondary institutions that might be leading FUTRE industry professionals. With one simple search, I found this treasure…. I had heard about MIT offering courses over the web for free to the community at [...]

Fix for Revit 2009 products that fail to run after being installed and run once

Fri, 16 May 2008 06:58 GMT

If you use one of the following Autodesk Revit 2009 based products:

An experience the below Issue:

You installed Revit, and then used it once. However, after you logged off and back on, you could not start Revit or create a journal file.

You will want to refer to the following Autodesk Knowledge Base article and the Solution offered:

Revit 2009 products fail to run after being installed and run once

Autodesk Vault / Productstream 2008 Hotfix - Multiple Status’ in CAD Title Bar

Fri, 16 May 2008 06:56 GMT

Autodesk recently released (Published date: 2008-05-01) a “Hotfix” for Autodesk Vault 2008 SP1 / Autodesk Productstream 2008 SP1. The “Hotfix” applies to the following Autodesk / AutoCAD 2008 based products:

“Hotfix” download page:

Multiple Status' in CAD Title Bar - Vault/Productstream 2008

Don't forget to download and read the accompanying Readme file.

The below is taken from the Readme file. Description of the issue:

Certain vault operations will lead to multiple vault status' displayed in the title bar for a file. This hotfix corrects the status displayed in the title bar.

Why use Raster Design?

Fri, 16 May 2008 05:17 GMT

Raster Design is misunderstood and underestimated, period. In the past, we'd purchase Raster Design for a single reason - it could transform coordinates on the fly. If you download a QUAD from the USGS, it's likely in a UTM Zone - NAD 27. As most of us work in State Plane (in this day and age I hope you do), it's always been nice to import QUADs or Aerials and transform them to state plane as they were imported, and it's ridiculously simple:

When AutoCAD MAP was released, users seemed to forget about their good ol' Raster, but missing from MAP (for a while) was the ability to transform coordinate systems without doing the attach and query dance. Once MAP had the ability to connect to data as shown below, images could finally be tranformed on the fly and unfortunately, several people shelved Raster Design - big mistake.

I recently visited with a firm doing pipeline work in a stretch of land that ran over 70 miles; a QUAD is about 7 1/2 miles wide; do the math and they'll be importing 9 or 10 images to cover the area. If you're importing quarter quads (like aerials), that's 40 images to yield the same coverage, and you KNOW someone will need to see them in a single drawing (need obviously being a relative term).

Welcome Raster Design:

Import your images using Raster Design; crop them to cut out only the area(s) you need displayed; merge them together in a single, seemless, georeferenced image. MAP can't do that.

ECWs and SIDs will need to be saved as a different format for obvious reasons, but choose the PNG format and cut down the image file size considerably.

ADSK Q1: Up 18%

Fri, 16 May 2008 04:39 GMT

Autodesk reports Q1 revenues of $599 million, up 18% from a year ago -- nearly half of the increase is thanks to the weak US$. Revenue Projections Q2 -- $600 - 610 million. Q3 -- $605 - 620 million. FY09...

BIM & BEAM: 3D Printing Example from Walter P Moore

Fri, 16 May 2008 04:18 GMT

On Monday we announced STL Exporter for Revit Family 2009 Now Available. On his BIM & BEAM blog, Structural Product Line Manager, Nicolas Mangon, has two pictures of an STL file exported from Revit and printed with a 3D printer:

3D Printing Example from Walter P Moore

Check them out. Still no word if Walter P. Moore has printed with sugar yet. :-)

An automatic numbering system for AutoCAD blocks using .NET - Part 4

Fri, 16 May 2008 04:17 GMT

In the original post in this series, we introduced a basic application to number AutoCAD objects, specifically blocks with attributes. In the second post we extended this to make use of a generic numbering system for drawing-resident AutoCAD objects, and...

Import DWFx Markup into Revit 2009?

Fri, 16 May 2008 01:21 GMT

Users noticed that you can export out DWFx from Revit 2009 but there does not seem to be an option to bring in back in as a DWFx markup set. The option is simply missing from the import file type menu.

No, you are not missing a step somewhere nor is there a method to do it at this point.

The Revit team has acknowledged the shortfall and will correct it in the next available update.

--Volker

3D Printing Example from Walter P Moore

Thu, 15 May 2008 23:58 GMT

Here are a few 3D printing examples from our good friend David Harrington from Walter P Moore Nicolas

Revit User Group of New Zealand - Notice of May Meeting

Thu, 15 May 2008 21:13 GMT

The next RUGNZ meeting is to be held on 21^st May at Jasmax's Offices - Level 4, 65 Upper Queen Street.

The agenda includes a presentation by Melanie Tristram on Revit Architecture 2009, discussion and a chance to share your work (if you wish).

Full details & RSVP at http://www.rugnz.co.nz/

Not Understanding CPU Lineups

Thu, 15 May 2008 21:11 GMT

Life for computer nerds used to be easy. In terms of Intel CPUs, there was the 8088, followed by the 80286, followed by the 30836. When Intel added complexity, we could still cope: the little-used 8086, the required-for-AutoCAD 8087 math...

Map 3D in minutes - Mapimport & Object classification at once

Thu, 15 May 2008 17:42 GMT

In the Map 3D 2009, it able to do "mapimport" and "object classification" at the same time. So it doesn't need to select entities manually for doing object classification. It provides very efficiency platform to migrate CAD to GIS. more

Hip tip: Plotting multiple LAYOUTs at the same time

Thu, 15 May 2008 17:39 GMT

Hello Daily AutoCAD readers,

If you are taking your printouts by using LAYOUTs, that you probably know that you have “Plot…” option when you write click on the layout tab. However, you cannot see “Plot…” option when you make multiple selection of layouts. Solution for this is using “Publish Selected Layouts…” option instead.

I hope you will get used to this small tip. Have a nice day…

Related articles:

See “Plotting” chapter in AutoCAD lessons.

Technorati Tags:

AutoCAD, plotting, layouts

Read in other languages:

TR.

Map 3D in minutes - Split and merge feature data

Thu, 15 May 2008 17:37 GMT

I would like to introduce the one of new feature in Map 3D 2009. The command is called "mapfeaturesplit" & "mapfeaturemerge". It able to split/ merge feature data seamlessly and provides the tools called "split & merge rules" to handling the data attribute for those data objects. more

AutoCAD 2009 on Jay Leno's Garage website

Thu, 15 May 2008 14:51 GMT

Whoa, I just got a call from Jay Leno today telling me that the AutoCAD video was up on his website www.jaylenosgarage.com. This was a short fun web video segment we shot while myself and fellow Autodesker Marie Domingo were down in Los Angeles visiting Jay's staff at the super cool garage facility housing one of the most impressive car collections in the world. In the video segment one of Jay's master of all things Jim and myself were discussing a common use in their facility for AutoCAD to create replacement parts for the auto collection as most collection auto's replacement parts are not stock parts when Jay breaks one. ;-)
AutoCAD is a very flexible Computer Aided Design "CAD" product allowing it to be used in many different ways and industries. We also have industry specific products such as Autodesk Inventor, Revit, etc at Autodesk but for many of the parts and needs of Jay Leno's Garage AutoCAD fits perfectly. Jay and his staff were awesome and the collection of cars was absolutely amazing. Before seeing Jay's car collection I thought Stanley Steamer was only a carpet cleaning company not a turn of the century steam powered vehicle which Jay had a couple of originals.

See the video below of Jim and I discussing AutoCAD use at Jay Leno's Garage!

I have some pretty cool other things in the works after my sabbatical as well as presentations and Q&A at AUGI CAD Camp June 11th 2008 in Phoenix Arizona and San Antonio and Austin Texas User Group meetings.

Cheers,
Shaan

Technorati Tags: AutoCAD 2009,AutoCAD,Autodesk,Jay Leno,CAD,Jay Lenos Garage,AUGI CAD Camp,Los Angeles,Phoenix,San Antonio,Austin,Auto Collection

Archblocks Offers Multiple Discounts

Thu, 15 May 2008 10:41 GMT

Now when you buy Archblocks Architectural Library at regular price you can add a multiple licencing for just $10 for each additional user. For individual

Autodesk 3ds Max 2009 Hotfix - 2008.04.11

Thu, 15 May 2008 09:37 GMT

A couple of weeks ago (Published date: 2008-05-01), Autodesk released a Hotfix for Autodesk 3ds Max 2009….

Hotfix - Autodesk 3ds Max 2009 - 2008.04.11

Don't forget to download and read the accompanying Readme (PDF) file.

The below is taken from the download page:

The ProMaterials libraries included within Autodesk 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design 2009 were compiled for SSE2 compatible and newer processors. Some Athlon processors that are within the minimum system requirements for use with 3ds Max 2009 are not SSE2 compatible and the affected libraries have been fixed to work on these systems.

Bentley "Innovates" Annual Subscriptions

Thu, 15 May 2008 07:29 GMT

What is free is now supplemented by a $250 a year subscription program: Bentley Announces Innovative Discovery Subscription Program for GenerativeComponents Annual subscriptions that provide support are as old as my youngest daughter, and so I was curious about how...

STL Exporter for Autodesk Revit 2009 products

Thu, 15 May 2008 07:00 GMT

A few days ago (2008-05-12) over on Autodesk Labs, Scott Sheppard announced the availability of a “STL Exporter” Add-in for Autodesk Revit 2009 based products:

Direct link to “STL Exporter” Add-in:

STL Exporter for Revit Platform 2009

The below quote is how Autodesk Labs explains “STL Exporter” for Revit 2009 products:

Create 3D Prints of your Revit 2009 models. As architects and engineers start their digital designs earlier and keep them digital for longer, they want a way to still physically interact with their designs. With the economical availability of 3D printers this has become possible. 3D printed models increasingly serve as a critical part of the design process to study design options and improve communication between project members and owners. The STL Exporter for the Revit 2009 family of products is a proof of concept project that we are working on. It is designed to take a 3D Revit building information model and create an STL file that can be used for 3D Printing.

Source: STL Exporter for Revit Family 2009 Now Available